Define Your Destination
by olivirawr
Summary: Chapter one, in which Molly meets the Doctor and becomes his companion.


Molly sighed as she handed Sherlock his papers. "Victim #4. Let's go," he said, turning to his partner. "Sherlock, I was wondering, maybe once you finished this case…" Molly began, following him out the large double doors. She had an extra ticket to the ballet in town this week. And by had, she purposefully bought so the two could see it together.  
"No time, John and I are far too busy." he interrupted, his brisk pace hard to keep up with.  
Rejected. Again. Countless times he had pushed her aside, and on many an occasion, had simply been flat out rude.  
"We'll be seeing you, Molly. Thanks for all your help," said his companion, John, who was practically running after Sherlock. He gave her an apologetic look for Sherlock's behavior.  
"It's okay, I knew he wouldn't want to," she said, looking away from the stocky man. The heavy metal doors swung shut as the pair exited the hospital, leaving Molly alone in the florescent lights.

Molly Hooper was an ordinary girl. Simple. That's what she liked to call it, but she was only masking the truth. It was more like stuck; trapped in a rut so old and deep that it was eroding bit by bit with each step she took. Her schedule was the same each day, putting in long hours at the hospital where she worked, preparing the bodies of murder victims for police work. Sometimes she stayed afterhours, tinkering with the microscopes and cleaning equipment for lack of better entertainment elsewhere.  
She longed for the day when she would become something better.  
Simple just wasn't satisfying.  
Perhaps if she became better, she wouldn't always be brushed off like a pest. Maybe she'd be noticed.

Molly hung up her white surgeon's overcoat to the peg, swapping it for her black pea coat and doing up the buttons as she stepped into the downpour outside.  
That was the night she met him. The man who would change her life.  
She wasn't far from home, just another three blocks until she reached the apartment complex where she lived when a man stopped her outside of a Holiday Inn.  
"Excuse me, love, do you have the time?" he asked. He was at least a foot taller than Molly, wearing brown slacks and a tweed jacket, and around his neck; a bowtie of all things. His clothes were dirty and his face was smudged with grease. His reddish-brown hair dripped from the rain, falling into his hazel eyes.  
"It's um, a bit after one a.m." she replied.  
"And the year?"  
"2012?"  
The strange man smiled. "Thank you!" he blurted out, before running back behind the hotel. Molly stared after him, using her arms to shield her face from the rain. She smelled a faint trace of firewood, and a small trail of smoke appeared to be billowing up from behind the Inn, where the man had headed. Perhaps he was having troubles with his car?  
She hesitantly took a step forward. Then another. Before she knew it, and certainly against her wishes, her feet had carried her to see the man again.  
Molly was greeted with… A small blue Police box. The trail of smoke wafted lazily up from the back end, while the man tinkered with some wires sprouting from a hatch near the door.  
"Um…. Do you need any help?" she asked.  
The man turned and smiled, dropping a wrench at his feet. "You've stumbled upon a very strange man with a large blue police box, and your first question isn't "What is _that_!?" or "Who are you!?" Sweetheart, I'm very much impressed."  
He wiped his brow with the back of his wrist, smearing the grease across his forehead. "I'm The Doctor. Part-time time traveler, part-time intergalactic savior. I'm a Time Lord. From the planet Gallifrey." He extended a blackened hand. "Pleased to meet you,"  
Molly looked at it for a second, then shrugged and took it. Years of working in the morgue had taught her not to be squeamish.  
"Likewise. I'm Molly. Molly Hooper." She said. "You're a time traveler? What are you doing here?"  
"Ah!" he exclaimed, dropping her hand and picking up his tools from the ground. "Well, there was some trouble with the engine, so it sort of… tossed me right here. One minute, I was in deep space, the next on Earth." He knelt back down to fiddle with the wires some more. "So once I fix the darned thing… I'll be off."  
She watched as the man carefully selected a rod-looking tool, and with a flick of his wrist the top part extended out into claws. As he pointed it towards the wires, it emitted a high pitched whirring sound. The light on it flashed green, and went out as the noise died down.  
"There," The Doctor slid the hatch closed and the lights from inside the box flickered to life.  
He climbed up the four steps into the machine. "Thank you dearly for your time." He said with a wink. He turned to close the door behind him.  
"Your time machine… Does it really work?" Molly asked, taking a step towards him.  
The lanky man stopped with the door half open, and turned on his heels to face her.  
"Would you like to find out?" he smiled, holding a hand out towards her from the box's threshold.  
Molly hesitated a moment. But what did she have to lose? Certainly nothing of much importance.

"I'd love to,"


End file.
